touch and go
by taee
Summary: Chung finds his soulmate and learns how to run in circles for years, while Eve finds her soulmate and wonders why things don't fall into place like she'd expected.
1. but still give me answers

Disclaimer: I don't own Elsword.

* * *

touch and go

(baby, you're asking all the wrong questions)

* * *

After his fourth final, Chung trips out the door feeling so hazy and lightheaded he half considers giving up on life and his next final that starts in two hours. He doesn't, instead settling on making his way to the nearest Starbucks for one (or five) much needed coffees and a power nap. Chung's telling himself weakly to power through when he feels it, what nearly everyone longs to feel, the cool, tingling press of a soulmate mark inking itself into his skin. If he didn't feel like the walking dead, maybe Chung would have some shame, but he does feel like shit, so he yanks up his shirt, and there it is, a bluish crown right under his ribs.

"Hey," he reaches out to the girl who he'd just brushed past. "I think we're soulmates."

She turns around, glances at his face, then his exposed mark, then back at his face. She pulls down the collar of her blouse to reveal an identical one. "...We are. And?" The way she looks at him is what he imagines he looks like when watching ads.

Then she says something else and leaves, but the ringing in his head is too loud for him to hear, and he currently doesn't have the mental capacity to do anything but blink sluggishly at her retreating back. Or remember the way to Starbucks.

When he's appropriately armed with coffee and another hour of sleep, Chung pats himself on the back and grinds through the last test for the day with a highly debatable degree of success, then somehow makes it back to his dorm and presses a hand to his mark, briefly recalling what was supposed to be the most significant moment of his life, before his knees hit the bed and he promptly knocks out.

* * *

He wakes up not much later, because Elsword is suddenly there, smacking Chung's bare, cold stomach with an excitement that he absolutely can't relate to.

"What the fu-"

"Who is it?" Elsword yells into his face, poking at the mark.

" _Fuck. Off._ " Chung ducks under the blankets, making sure to kick Elsword viciously in the crotch when the other boy continues to pester him about his unknown soulmate. It shuts him up very effectively.

* * *

Elsword thinks it's a good idea to attend Ciel's (which basically means Lu set him up for it) party after finals are over, and he thinks it's an even better idea to drag Chung along with him. To loosen up, he says, but Chung knows better. Elsword has a code he follows, the only fault being that he needs Chung's help to stick with it. He's just there as a safety device, to make sure Elsword doesn't drown in a puddle of alcohol or in Aisha's face. Though as he slumps into the couch two hours in with another styrofoam cup of suspiciously blue liquid, the music plays so loud Chung feels it rumbling through his feet, not helping his headache at all, and he sincerely regrets running into Elsword that fateful day at freshman orientation.

Aisha's hopped onto a table and is giving her best, pretty decent, shot at pole dancing with the pole stuck in the center while the crowd explodes into catcalls and compliments about her ass, but she's really only looking at Elsword, tongue slipping out and eyes smoldering. Except for that brief second where she glares at Chung and telepathically communicates her willingness to murder if he cockblocks once again. He honestly doesn't want to. Chung thinks about Elsword and letting the two go at it in a closet, just to finally get rid of the oppressive amount of unresolved sexual tension they have, but as the best friend, Chung's the one that Elsword will come wailing and blaming to when he starts regretting. Which would turn into an even messier mess that he won't have the patience to deal with.

Elsword is standing slack jawed and silent a little closer to the center of the action, and when Chung gets up to drag him away, he startles, spilling his drink in his haste to wipe away the drool.

Chung raises an eyebrow. "...Want to go back? She's being extra aggressive today."

Elsword nods stiffly, wiping his hands on his clothes and subtly adjusting his pants-

" _I can't believe y_ -"

"Bathroom first," he grunts, speed walking away. Chung sighs incurably at how useless Elsword is at dealing with his more serious personal issues, following slowly, so tired of everything. He really should be used to this already.

* * *

As he waits for his best friend (sadly) and roommate to take care of his business, Chung scans the crowd for Aisha's purple hair, if she finds them they're dead, but instead the crowd shifts and he sees orange eyes and silver; his soulmate returning his gaze. She's standing awkwardly, weight tilted to one side and arms tightly crossed, though out of place, still pretty and delicate looking under the neon lights. Neither of them make a move to approach the other and Chung lets the moment pass easily when she disappears from view behind the other shadowy figures.

Chung silently watches the spot even after she's gone, until Elsword emerges from the bathroom looking much more relieved and much more guilty than before.

Chung expresses his judgement facially, and Elsword flips him off.

"Let's go before Aisha hunts us down and murders me," he says, though the surroundings are too loud for words. He down the rest of his drink and tossing the cup into a nearby bin, Elsword cackling when it bounces off the rim. He doesn't make it either when he tries, so Chung snickers away and patches his pride up.

* * *

Chung takes Elsword home under a cloud of brooding quiet and sleeps for a solid sixteen hours, dreaming of unscrewing a flawless blue gem from his soulmate's forehead.

("Won't you regret this?" he asks.

"Won't you?" she fires back. )

Eve, the dream him realizes, is her name.

* * *

So he wakes up the next day sometime in the afternoon desperately wanting to go back to before, when he was just Chung without a mark and didn't have to deal with whatever freaky shit comes along with being someone else's other half, because he knows that the dream is just the start.

He's right; from that point on, he'll occasionally get flashes of her feelings, and he's sure it's vice versa too. Though not as frequent as he'd expected, only occurring when either of them are particularly emotional, which in Eve's case essentially never happens, but whenever it does, it unsettles him for a long while. Like the time when a few months into the next term, he's startled awake at four in the morning by a spike of horrified panic, and for a few seconds the early morning is overwhelmingly dark, save for the glints of phantom metal. And then there's nothing and Chung rolls over and falls back asleep. The dreams, however, are too common. He doesn't remember most of them, but each time he wakes up he feels like he somehow knows Eve a little better, has moved a little closer no matter how he tries not second one he recalls takes place in a junkyard, impossibly high towers of cars stacked against a yellow-gray sky. Steam billows from the tops of some of the piles of metal and broken things, and everything smells vaguely of grease and sulfur and a mellow sort of sadness. Eve is sitting on a scratched up refrigerator with a handful of shining nuts and bolts, tossing them into the distance one by one, waiting for him. She says nothing, but he knows. Even though there's plenty of space to sit beside her, Chung only stands and stands, listening to things creaking, crashing in the backdrop, each metal bit clink as they land. Eventually, Eve runs out of them and she rolls the last bolt between her fingers, back and forth, before she closes her hand around it and decides to keep it.

* * *

Elsword and Chung make sure they eat fancy at least once a week, even if they cut down on their budget for other days, once a week, they make sure to not feel like the pitiful, broke college students that they are. It's also a good time to bring up certain topics that they're sure the other won't like, since this is usually when they're most agreeable toward unagreeable things.

"You never did tell me who they were," Elsword blurts out, trying to get Chung to stop talking about Aisha, "your soulmate."

Chung sighs deeply, slumping in his seat and stress drinking more soda. "If you figure things out with Aisha I'll tell you who it is."

"That's not fair! You know why I can't."

"Correction, won't." Elsword has known his soulmate, Ain, since he was in elementary school, when Ain, also his neighbor, came over for the first time to babysit. Ain later had to move away, and in his absence, Elsword met Aisha, fell in like (Chung would argue love), etc, etc, and now the current him can't make a choice. It's always been like that; Elsword tears his own path without regard, but when it comes to choosing what or who to keep he staggers and become fixated on ways to keep everything, even if there is none.

Elsword rocks his cup around, letting the ice rattle around the stray lime wedge, face carefully blank, Chung's cue to drop it once again. He does. No amount of convincing could move the other, he knows, so he saves it to bring up again another day for another attempt, like always. Elsword looks relieved after confirming his temporary silence on the topic, and starts blankly chattering about his new English professor.

Chung likes to say he's persisting in pushing ElsAi together because he's anticipating the wedding, not because he wants to be a good friend. Aisha would plan one for books, Elsword too soft to stop her, a wedding of legend that Chung doesn't want to miss out on just because Elsword's currently a stupid, selfish kid. And Ain? Chung's never met the man but Aisha usually makes him out to be a real stick in the mud.

"He'd make all of you wear…..white or some shit. One color. Gotta be unified on their happy unification day," she'd slurred into his ear. "Make you say 'broccoli' instead of cheese when the fancy photographer comes. You'd have to pose." She emphasizes the last word, spitting it out with as much hate as a loose, drunk her can manage. It's not much at all, so it results in her sounding childish instead.

"You won't go?" Chung asked, yawning.

"You really think I could watch that?" Aisha asked, rhetorical, then doubled over laughing so hard tears crinkled at the corners of her eyes. (Or it could've been vice versa; you never could tell exactly with Aisha.)

Chung wouldn't want to go to that wedding either.

* * *

"Mr. Chung Seiker." Eve reads off a pack of papers on a clipboard, a ridiculously large crown smothered in smiley face stickers resting perfectly on her head. "What do you think makes you qualified to be my soulmate?"

Chung blinks in surprise. They're in a perfectly square, off-white room, and Eve sits behind a blockish table, chair tilted back and balanced on two legs. It seems somehow out of character, but the way she appraises him dully isn't.

"I don't know." He shrugs. "I'm nice, I guess."

"You're not nice to me." She drops the clipboard on the table, like she's trying to give off the feeling of being pissed. It makes a big, clean noise but lacks in a lot in the force department.

He shrugs again. "I'm not really anything to you." It's true. Besides the time he saw her at Ciel's and the dreams, he hasn't run into her again, and he never went looking, either. He doesn't know if she has.

"That's right." Eve adjusts her crown. " So then why is it you? Why are you my soulmate?"

"I'm not the one you should be asking," he mumbles as Eve sighs loudly, insufferably, and a click, almost like a camera shutter, resounds throughout the room. When Chung blinks, he finds that their roles are reversed; he's the one behind the table, elbows propped up and fingers laced under his chin, a clipboard with papers laid out in front of him. Eve is sitting in his previous seat with her arms crossed over her chest and legs crossed at the knee. She's leaning against the back of the chair, so even though her vantage point is lower, it still seems like she's looking down at him. But the silly crown is on his head now.

"Ms. Eve Nasod. Why did…..." Chung starts, fighting the urge to flip through the packet filled with pages and pages of information about Eve in it. "What are…...," he trails off, unsure of what he wants to ask. The room is fading along with his string of thought, getting dimmer with every second he hesitates, and only Eve's eyes don't lose their shine, glossy bright and fierce, almost angry when she gives him her answer for a question he has yet to voice.

"I don't know, _I'm_ not the one you should be asking." She throws his words right back at him so coolly, yet twice as mocking.

* * *

He blinks back into consciousness, cheek pressed into the textured surface of his own desk in the dorm. The rising sun casts citrusy shadows through the window and the prospect of having to go to class and deal with work makes him exhausted. Right now he half wants to see Eve again and. And something. And talk. Anything. Which scares him all the more because he doesn't understand why, doesn't want to meet her, doesn't want to know her as easily as he does. Doesn't even want a soulmate. That's not his decision, however, but everything else, the feelings and urges, the time spent with each other, in those, at least he has a choice.

* * *

A/N: Right now I'm just remembering when I first started writing fanfiction and I thought it'd be easy to finish a fic. haha. And then I remember when I thought to myself over to summer that I should never write a chaptered fic ever again. Well. Here I am...  
I know I've said this before but hopefully I finish this this time, because I really like soulmate aus. Honestly this is kind of terrible and I didn't plan it at all but yeah. On a more positive note I can't believe this got to over 2k!

Thanks for reading!


	2. though you still hold on

Disclaimer: I don't own Elsword.

What's this? An update? It is indeed, surprisingly.

This chapter was written by justforfum a long, long time ago when we did a fic chapter exchange thing. After editing it a bit and adding some parts in, which took a lot longer than it should have (sorry!), here we are now!

* * *

in the dark, we've lost our hands

* * *

Graduation rolls around. Long droning speeches and obligatory "We are the future…" speeches by the valedictorians and selected honors students are enough to put even the most wired student to sleep. Chung doesn't care about the roll of paper he walks out with, nor does he care about the circle of friends and family all clustered around one another, promising each other they'll keep in touch. He's been through high school before. He knows how those dozens of friends can quickly fall to a select few.

What he does care about, though, is the sense of nostalgia that washes over him as he takes one last stroll down the main walkway towards the parking lots. It might be Eve's, might be his. Couldn't tell the difference these days.

"I'm proud of you, son…" his father says to him as a ring of flowers is thrown over his neck. Obligatory pictures and obligatory party invites ensue. The smile plastered on his face couldn't be more fake than the flora resting around his neck.

His mind is on Eve. She feels the same way, too. Everything feels so overdone. She just wants to go home. Chung doesn't see her anywhere. In fact the only time he saw her was when she was called in first to walk before him. He prays that would be the last. College was tough enough wrestling with homework and exams. Worrying about her next move was something he would never want to worry about for the rest of his life.

* * *

"Where are you going after this?" an Eve dressed in a police uniform asks as she stands at the doorway of a prison complex, an open cuff to a ball and chain and a key dangle on either hand.

Chung doesn't answer. He's read about it before, that distance can sever the connection between them. Instead he's pulling off his black and white striped uniform and putting on a business suit. It doesn't occur to him that he's changing in front of her but she regards him with the same neutrality as the day they met: annoyance.

"Where are you going after this?" she asks again.

He feels if he doesn't answer she will repeat herself forever.

Of course, she doesn't.

"So that's it then? We're just going our separate ways?" The look on her face is hard to read. She's leaning against the door frame and Chung can't tell if she's happy or… something else.

He thinks of the perfect response; one that has been ringing in his head since they first met.

He puts on a thick grey coat and a bowler cap, turning his head towards her but not looking her in the eye.

"We are. And?"

* * *

Work overseas is not at all what he expected.

Beyond the expected time differences and the unfamiliar accents grating harshly on his ears, Chung hasn't found the change that he sought, and feels no small amount of crushing disappointment towards it.

Distance severs the connection, is what he'd heard. Well, he'd certainly heard wrong.

In college he was occupied. He had his worries, he had the same sleep schedule as her. But now, on the other side of the world with nothing but his thoughts to keep him company, her thoughts just keep finding their way back to him when he's trying to sleep, when he's just trying to live his own, singular life as Chung and Chung alone.

The first week is alright only because he still holds out hope that it's just a passing phase. When the second week comes around, then the third, the fourth, the fifth, and Eve's presence in his mind still doesn't let up, Chung can feel himself slowly slip down the path to insanity. He's already run halfway across the world to escape from them and their separate togetherness, but still, he can feel her muted frustration, disappointment, buzzing incessantly beneath the thin veneer of his own thoughts. Always present, always demanding.

It's killing him. So much so that he itches to ask, just what do you want from me? But who would hear his question? Certainly not Eve, the last person in the world he'd speak to.

What do you want from me, Chung questions himself in the wee and gray hours of the morning, a headache or Eve or himself blazing at his temples. What do you want from me?

(Leave me alone already.)

He hasn't slept a full night in months.

* * *

And when he does sleep:

Eve has her head in his lap, one hand folded over her chest, above her heart, and the other forever frozen in time, reaching out towards his still face but never touching.

She fills his vision, but this time Chung can't look away. They are unmoving statues hidden in one of the dips of the rolling hills that extend far, far beyond them, so much farther than he can comprehend. The long grasses are blades of water, he knows, from seeing them ripple tantalizingly in his periphery. If only he could lift his head.

But he just can't. Eve stares at him, unflappable, unflinching, casting her silent judgement on him as always, always, always.

(What do you want from me?)

The grass ocean is dancing. The blades bend and swirl in tandem, creating wind from their minutely synchronized movements, rising like a gossamer veil touched by emotion. It glimmers silver, flashes gold, reflects the infinite sky as the two deities of heaven and water meet at the last frontiers of the universe. Chung thinks if he can just look up he will finally know the color of clear.

Leave me alone.

Eve's hand drops, her strings cut.

Chung, blissfully freed, looks up and knows the color of loneliness.

* * *

"Did you try building a wall?" his coworker says to him. She has long blonde hair and bright green eyes. She's hanging over the wall that separates their cubicles in such a way that her name tag flops over as to his side. "Rena" it reads with little flowers drawn on the side as decoration. She steals a chocolate bar from his desk, giving Chung the perfect angle to see the mark of a soulmate burned right under her ear.

Chung's bag-burdened eyes turn back to his computer screen, just as the 400th email of the day comes in. All caps on the title. This client is not happy.

His head slowly shakes, energy long gone and it isn't even lunch time yet. "I don't know how to." He wishes he did.

Rena smiles, "It takes a bit, but I can show you."

* * *

On his lap is a bowl of oatmeal. There's no taste to it of course, but he imagines it'd be laden with sugar. That's the only way to eat the grey muck. The bench he's sitting on atop the hill creeks to emphasize the silence as he leans back with an empty sigh. The sun in the distant hills falls from the sky, casting a calm mix of orange and purple. Next to him is a brick wall.

"Can you hear me?" he says to no one in particular.

He expects no answer and there is none, but it's peculiar all the same.

He scoops another spoonful of grey muck and brings it to his lips as the colors about him fade to darkness.

Chung still can't taste it, doesn't know if he wants to honestly, but he hopes fiercely that it's sweet like he thinks.

* * *

"Haven't seen you in forever!" Elsword grins, giving him a hug before slapping the empty seat next to him at the bar.

He smells like scotch and vomit. Chung takes a seat next to him.

"Yeah, well, I only get so much vacation time so don't expect me to come back every time you're in a crisis," Chung jokes, "You're paying for my flight over, right?"

"Oh, look at the time, I gotta go!" Elsword feigns running, getting a forced chuckle out of his friend. Chung subconsciously glances at his clock at the mention of time. It's just past midnight.

"So how've you been?"

"Fine, fine," Elsword shrugs dismissively, flagging the bartender for a round of drinks.

"I see, so you call me over to meet you at the dead of night on a weekday because you're doing just fine?"

The drinks arrive and Elsword downs his mug of swill in one go, slamming the glass down and burping loudly as his head hangs over the table. His grin fades.

"I've just been thinkin'."

"Thinkin' or drinkin'?" Chung raises a brow at him.

Again Elsword shrugs, his eyes focusing on the beer-stained coaster in front of him, "Both, I guess. Aisha and I had a falling out."

"Ah," Chung idly sips his beer. He doesn't like it but drinks anyways, "What's the problem this time?"

"I mean we're done. She doesn't want to see me anymore."

"Oh."

"It's because I can't choose."

"Between him and her?"

Elsword sways in his seat, conflict burning in his eyes, "I can't get either of them out of my mind."

His drunk friend goes on a tirade about the both of them. How Aisha constantly puts herself in front of him, reminding him that she's there for him when Ain isn't. He loves her but Ain just gets in his head in ways that she can't (literally and figuratively). She had threatened him, saying if he won't accept her then she'll just go back to her own soulmate as well. Whoever that is.

"It's you, isn't it?"

Chung blinks, "Huh?"

"You're her soulmate."

"Els, that doesn't make any sense."

"It does! That's why you wouldn't tell me every time I asked! That's why she always looks at you with such disgust!"

Chung never thought about it as disgust but since he brought it up-

"She's come back to you. That's why you're here, isn't it? It all makes sense!"

"Els, calm down."

Chung's attempt clearly has the opposite effect as Elsword stands off his chair and is yelling at his face now.

"You're sleeping with her aren't you? Aren't you?!"

"I-what? No! I'd never-"

"Then who? Who is it?! Why would you keep it a secret from me?"

Chung honestly never had a good reason. Or rather, thinking back on it, his reasons for keeping it a secret were pretty stupid and childish. He just couldn't say it. How could he admit it to Elsword when he couldn't even admit it to himself?

Strong hands grip him by the collar and throw him to the ground. The bartender is shouting now, telling Elsword to get out of his bar or he'll call the police. Elsword ignores him as he stands over Chung, fists clenched tight enough to see the white of his knuckles.

"Who is it?!"

"You don't even know her!"

"Bullshit I don't know her! It's Aisha!"

"It's not her!"

"Liar!"

He throws himself onto Chung but is quickly wrenched off him by the other patrons. At this point Chung has had enough. He's done putting up with Elsword. He gave up his limited vacation time up for this drunk and he almost got his face beat in because of it. He makes for the door but not before the redhead screams after him.

"Yeah, you run away! You can go fuck that whore for all I care! I'm done with her! I'm done with both of you!"

* * *

He tosses a tennis ball at the brick wall and it sinks into the hard surface before falling flat on the floor before it. Begrudgingly Chung makes his way across the entire court and picked it up before walking all the way back to his side of the play field and throwing it, again. This time he has a proper tennis racket with him and he delivers a mighty serve, fast enough to ace even the professionals, or so he'd like to believe. The ever expansive brick wall catches it, of course, and the ball flops to the pavement, yet again.

These dreams are getting old. There is no sound, no impact.

He sidles over to the other end of the marker and pulls out his second tennis ball.

"Forty-love, match point," Chung declares, though he can't hear a thing, and tosses the ball in the air. How many rounds had he won, now? It certainly didn't feel like he was winning.

* * *

"So how was vacation?" Rena asks, hanging over his cubicle wall in search of another candy bar. He slides over a bowl of mints which she snags a handful of.

"Eh," Chung grunts.

"That good, huh? Did you see your soulmate, again?"

"Why would I want to see her?" He really doesn't.

"Oh, sorry I didn't know it was like that for you."

"Why else would I want to build a barrier between us?"

Rena shrugs, "People do it because some have focus intensive jobs. Others do it because they like the silence. That doesn't necessarily mean they don't spend time with their soulmate. I still do."

Chung scratches his head in frustration, "Well I do it because I want nothing to do with her."

He can see her tilt her head in confusion.

"You live out here on your own, don't you?"

"Yeah."

"Wouldn't you feel even a little bit lonely, then?"

"No, not really," he answers, lies. "I mean. I've got you, haven't I?"

Rena laughs and ruffles his hair because she takes in compliments like candies and and they've grown on each other ever since Chung hauled ass out here, fresh out of college and oh so desperate to run. It's been a few years already though, and Rena may have a point. He's still young, yes, but he's lost all of that freshness and casual arrogance he'd used to possess, and perhaps he is a little less flighty, a little more willing to touch land.

"Sure, but am I someone you want to grow old with?" she says. "Go find that person, those people, Chung. Loneliness isn't a good look on you, and you've been wearing it for too long already. "

Chung forces down the lump in his throat. "I'm not lonely," he repeats.

Rena gives him a long suffering look and returns to her work while he sighs, melding into his chair and wondering how much he would've hurt, if at all, if he'd decided to take his chances with Eve.

It probably wouldn't have been as bad, he grudgingly concludes. At least then, that moron Elsword might still be sane.

* * *

An opportunity presents itself to him in the form of a transfer to Hamel, his hometown, which Chung eagerly takes.

Rena and her soulmate, Ventus, see him off to the airport. When he'd met Ventus a while back, Chung instantly understood why Rena would want a barrier between them; he seemed exactly the distracting type that'd think too loudly.

"Safe travels, Chung. Come back and visit when you get the chance to, " Rena says, fond and wistful.

He smiles at them faintly, "I'll probably be busy for awhile. Settling back in and all that, but when I find the time." Then Chung adds, "I'd like to."

Which is, by all intents and purposes, true.

What is also true is that he'll miss them, and that on the plane, when he shuffles down to his row in economy class, the seat beside his is occupied by none other than Eve.

* * *

End.2

* * *

A/N: I am abandoning this story.

But... justforfum will be finishing it! *applause*

Thank you so much for the support and for helping me through this fic and everything else ;-;


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